Tag Archives: bell mountain

This is what he saw–taller than a man, and able to kill a horse with one bite.

Heidi has asked for another excerpt from Bell Mountain, this one featuring one of her favorite characters, Helki the Rod, and one of those giant birds that has lately wandered into Obann. We pick up the scene on Page 197.

“Helki, too, spent the night on the plain; and Helki, too, saw a giant bird.

“It stalked right past him, and looked right at him, and opened its massive beak halfway, as if to warn him not to move. Helki stood his ground, returning the bird’s look. He thought that if he had to, he could break the bird’s leg with his staff. But he very much hoped he wouldn’t have to.

“The bird made no move in his direction. Whatever it was hunting, it wasn’t him. He watched until it strode out of sight.

“Only then did he become aware that he was trembling from head to toe. He threw his staff in the air and caught it, and yowled at the top of his lungs.

“‘Whee-aaaah!’ The whole night rang with it. ‘Lord God, you have outdone yourself!'”

“It wasn’t much of a prayer, but that was how Obst had taught him to pray and that was how he did it….”

Anyone can ask for an excerpt from any book in the Bell Mountain series. There are now 11 titles in print, and Book No. 12, His Mercy Endureth Forever, is being edited. Just make sure you give me the right page number and a brief description of what you’d like me to post as an excerpt.

Joshua asked for this excerpt: from page 1 and page 2 of Bell Mountain. Remember that Jack’s dream, described here, was originally one of mine.

“In Jack’s dream, he would be somewhere in the valley, maybe trying to throw a stone across the river… So he would be throwing stones, or looking for blackberries, when suddenly the mountain would begin to sing.

“It was always the biggest mountain, Bell Mountain, with its peak hidden in a cloak of clouds so that no one ever saw it. Jack had never in his life heard the sound of a really big bell, or he might have said the mountain rang, not sang.

“But it was a terrible song that made the other mountains tremble and filled the whole valley as if God had flooded it to the foothills with ice water. Jack couldn’t hear the noise of the river anymore, nor the wind, the birds, nor his own heart beating. Indeed, it seemed the river stopped flowing and his heart stopped beating. And he was too terrified to pick up his feet and run away–too terrified even to breathe.

“And then he would wake up.

“As his breath came back to him, he would always find that he was still frightened: scared enough to shiver. But on top of being frightened, and running deeper than the fear, was something else…”

Anyone can request an excerpt from any of my books. Just be sure to give the title, page number, and a brief description of what you want me to excerpt. And remember–we don’t want to spoil any of the climaxes.

And if you haven’t read any of these books yet–well, they’re waiting for you.

This is Heidi’s idea, and I’m going with it: taking reader requests for excerpts from my book. It’s only fitting that she have the first crack at it; and she has asked for this passage, from Bell Mountain, introducing the Omah–the squirrel-sized, manlike creatures who will play a large role in the story. We find it on Page 47.

“Jack and Ellayne held their breath. This was no animal whose like they’d ever seen before. Not a fox, nor a rat, nor anything they had a word for.

“It came tiptoeing out on little furry feet, walking on its hind legs like a tiny human being. Indeed, it might have been a human being, if it weren’t so small and covered with glossy brown fur from head to foot–except for its face, which was bare and pale and almost human.

“From outside the light, the creature’s eyes had shone red; but up closer they were brown, almost black, bright and shiny and large.

“It tiptoed up to the bread, hesitated for a moment, and then reached down and picked it up–with hands.

“Little furry hands, real hands like Jack’s own: Jack didn’t know what to think. All he could do was stare as the creature handled the bread with nimble fingers, studying it, sniffing it, and finally stuffing it into its mouth. Jack saw a flash of tiny white teeth.

“With its cheeks bulging, the creature turned suddenly and scampered back into the darkness.”

I’ll take reader requests for excerpts, although I have no idea whether this new feature will be popular. Just make sure you give me the page number and describe what you want to see. Do steer clear of excerpts that might spoil the ending of the story.

Gee, wouldn’t it be great if these excerpts moved people to buy the books?

These are somebody’s idea of “the Top Ten Prehistorical Mammal Predators.” I didn’t actually count them, but I suspect they listed more than ten.

How many of these have appeared in Obann?

Andrewsarchus, Hyaenodon, Smilodon, Entelodont–plus a lot of critters not featured in this video. The books in which those four appear are Bell Mountain, The Cellar Beneath the Cellar, The Thunder King, and The Last Banquet. I do have fun, writing them up–and I hope it’s fun for the readers, too.

Note I have resisted the temptation to invent animals, like giant hamsters or talking clams. I deserve extra sales for that, don’t you think?

Yes–this is indeed your last chance to buy my books in the year 2018! If you wait till tomorrow, it’ll be 2019.

So get onto amazon.com and order a couple of ’em, or click “Books” and then the little shopping cart icon and order direct from the publisher. It’s easy! Even I could do it, and I stink at computers.

The saga begins with Bell Mountain and now consists of ten books, with No. 11, The Temptation, just about ready to come off the press. Thrill to wars, miracles, treachery, conversions, really strange and menacing beasts, weird barbaric customs, love, friendship, faithfulness, barbarian invasions, an avalanche–everything that makes life worth living! It’s all in here.

Buy ’em for your kids, and by the time they reach No. 10, The Silver Trumpet, they’ll be old enough to read ’em all over again.

And I have heard, but cannot confirm, that every time anybody buys one of my books, somewhere in the world, a leftid cries “Ouch!”

I’ve been so busy running our Christmas Carol Contest, I totally forgot to run my annual commercial for my books. I hope I haven’t put it off till too late.

Anyway, my books make really nice Christmas presents for family and friends. Even better, if you like them, we have ten of them in print by now, with No. 11, The Temptation, coming soon.

The series starts with Bell Mountain, and if you haven’t read it yet, now’s a good time to grab it. The adventure begins with two children, Jack and Ellayne, becoming convinced that God has called them to climb a mountain that no one’s ever climbed, and to ring a bell, placed on the summit some 2,000 years ago, that will usher in the end of the world–and they don’t know a professional assassin’s on their trail, whose mission is to stop them. Nor is there anyone to help them along the way but an old hermit who may not be quite sane.

How cool is that?

All right, it is a little tacky, me advertising my own books; but I don’t know who else is gonna do it. I do know that many of you who visit this blog regularly have already read the whole series. But many of you are new here, so why not check it out? Just click “Books,” and you’ll get all the information you need.

In fact, you can order them from right here on the blog. You can buy them direct from the publisher, if you click that little shopping cart icon, or click the amazon/Kindle icon and order them from there. Easy as pie! They’re not in bookstores, though, so you’ve got to buy them online.

And now I’ve got to get No. 12, His Mercy Endureth Forever, typed up and sent to Susan before Christmas.

As we try not to stew over what the doctor will say to us tomorrow, Patty’s recording my quarterly book sales statement. I haven’t the heart to look at it.

But say-hey, as Willie Mays would say! My books make great Christmas presents! For family members, friends, and casual acquaintances. For anybody. Give ’em Bell Mountain and get ’em hooked on the whole series. The books can’t do their job unless a lot of people read them. Unless maybe there’s one person out there who reads them and gets inspired to do something great.

Meanwhile, in sweater, coat, and hood, I’m out there every day it doesn’t rain, trying to finish writing His Mercy Endureth Forever: six hand-written pages today, and my hands are like ice. At the rate I’m going, I hope to finish sometime next week. Give God the glory for that!

Currently we have a little more than 32,000 comments here–so let’s shoot for 35,000. And to encourage reader participation, let’s make it a contest. Be the one to post Comment No. 35,000 and win an autographed copy of one of my books. Like The Silver Trumpet, for instance: Bell Mountain No. 10. Or any of its predecessors–although I ought to warn you that I’m just about out of copies of No. 1, Bell Mountain. But heck, there are nine others to choose from.

The contest is open to all, and all comments are eligible, with only the following exceptions: comments abusive to anyone else on this site, comments containing blasphemy or profanity, comments simply too fat-headed to publish, and ads disguised as comments (I still get one of those from time to time).

We’re talking about piling up another 3,000 comments, which might take a while, but it just didn’t seem right to offer a prize for No. 34,000. What kind of number is that? But 35,000 has a nice ring to it.

If you’ve already won a comment contest–and quite a few of you have–I don’t mind if you win another. It will impress your friends.

Spring is coming, unless those pesky bankers stop it, and I want to be ready to write when it gets here. But before I can do that, I have to revisit the books I’ve already written.

So first I read The Temptation, which will be No. 11 in the Bell Mountain series when it gets published sometime next year, and assuaged my fears that there might be something wrong with it. It’s a writer thing: we all get cold feet, somewhere along the way to publication.

Having done that, it’s time to get back with Jack and Ellayne and follow them, once again, up Bell Mountain. And maybe soon we’ll have The Silver Trumpet, I have no idea what’s taking it so long to get printed. After that, the other eight books in the series.

I do this to immerse myself in the fantasy world depicted in the books. Before I can write about it any more, I have to see it, hear it, feel it, smell it: because if I can’t, the reader won’t be able to, either.

So why is No. 6, The Palace, serving to illustrate this post?

Mostly because it has only three customer reviews on amazon and has lagged way behind the others. I can’t imagine why. Artist Kirk DouPonce used a real kid to model for Jack climbing up the extremely high wall of the Palace in Obann, and I wouldn’t like that boy to think he did it for nothing. What boy–Jack or the model? Both of ’em, of course. Jack’s human fly act deserves your support!

Hi, there! I’m Lord Reesh, the villain in the first four Bell Mountain books–and, if I do say so myself, a jolly good one! Oh, boy, wait’ll you see me get what’s coming to me!

Ah, but you can’t see that unless you read the books. And it’s only nine days till Christmas. Do you catch my drift?

These books, especially the ones with me in them, make fantastic presents for friends and family. And they’re so easy to get, even those simpletons on the Obann High Council could do it. Just click “Books” at the top of the page, and you can order any title either directly from the publisher or via amazon.com. Whatever that is. We don’t have it, where I come from.

If we were all in Obann, I could simply order you all to buy the books and sic Judge Tombo on you if you didn’t. You don’t want anything like that to happen!